We appreciate the enormous support that our ABestWeb community has experienced over the many years it has served its members and sponsors. We have decided to exit this business and have placed the property up for sale and we are actively entertaining interest.

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Some merchants feel that the $200 is not justifiable so they use alternate methods like sending the feed through www.bounce.cc, which is what I did with my old program on CJ so that all affiliates could use it.

You may want to check the bounce.cc forum on here to see if the merchant you want is on it.

Bounce, PopShops and GoldenCan are some of the ways you can get products without using the actual feeds. If you want the feeds to incorporate into your own database you need to apply for the datafeed access and pay the $200 fee (sometimes they will take it as a credit against your account, other times you need to pay it upfront, I am not sure of the criteria for that) or you need to contact your merchants individually and see if they have alternate access for you to get the feeds.

If you want to see what is in a merchant's feed, use the product search within CJ to pull up the products you are looking for and see if it has the data you need.

itsupportnotes, the feeds are all in a standard format, however each merchant supplies its own data, so each feeds "usefullness" still depends on the merchant.

Shouldn't datafeeds be free? After all, we are working to make the merchants more money.

This has to be a resource thing, why should they spend money to help you if your not generating sales? The $200 is more to make sure that you are serious (I think). I've thought about it and it is an investment that I'm not yet ready to make, even though I'm 100% data feeds. As I get more serious, and know that I'm ready to leverage it, I'd pay it in a heart beat.

This has to be a resource thing, why should they spend money to help you if your not generating sales?

Just name who would be spending any extra money, even if a newbie to this business is the one one who wants to get those datafeeds?

Originally Posted by iolaire

The $200 is more to make sure that you are serious (I think).

I think you better,

think again!

If you already have spent your time and money, in order to learn how to use those datafeeds, and in order to promote those merchants on your sites, why should you have to pay $200 dollars, in order to promote any merchant products on your sites that you already have invested the time and money, since you was serious enough to make them the first place?

Originally Posted by iolaire

I've thought about it and it is an investment that I'm not yet ready to make, even though I'm 100% data feeds. As I get more serious, and know that I'm ready to leverage it, I'd pay it in a heart beat.

Sorry iolaire, but I personally will never pay it in a heart beat, becuse I am by now, and also... because by now that I know better, I have had to become an antonyms of serious, so I now am broke and frivolous too.

It takes money to set up all these feeds. You might think it is just a click of a button - but what about the random emails that will come in? Customer service is one of the most time/resource consuming functions - data feeds are complex and will take even more time. Companies will be asked to answer complex questions from people who have little to no understanding of databases, programming and the like.

For example when you set up the CJ data-feeds (I have access to one set up for free by a merchant where I have high-enough sales to justify it) you have to answer about five questions relating to how you will receive the file, i.e. email, ftp, how to compress it, how to output it (pipe, csv, xml), ect. Someone at CJ has to take 5-10 minutes to set it up. Then they check email you that it is ready, with the expectation that you will followup if there are problems. They don't want to go through those steps just to have someone ask them what is a ftp program or how do I use these things.

Let me ask you this - if someone has learned how to use data-feeds effectively - shouldn't they be able to afford a one time $200 payment? I mean once you start dropping $100/month to process the feeds and host the output - $200 becomes a fairly small amount to amortize.

But overall don't despair, there are enough free feeds out there to get someone going.

As others have stated, there are programs that offer free data feeds outside CJ. However, some of those feeds are missing pertinent fields in their data feeds (i.e. LastUpdated). Also, similar fields shared between data feeds are often listed in a different order. This difference, though subtle, can make adding data to a database difficult since the feeds are coming from multiple sources and are arranged differently.

Let's look at it this way:

gather multiple feeds from multiple locations vs. gathering just one feed from one location with all interested affiliate programs included

parse each feed and lump results into an array/data table after writing separate code for each feed to account for the different ordering, spelling, and other discrepancies related to fields vs. parsing just one feed minus the discrepancies using the same code

manually download each file everyday or whenever the feeds are updated vs. having CJ automatically sent the feed to your ftp server

This list could probably be extended to account for other things, but you get the picture. While we might not like the $200 price tag on CJ's data feed, it certainly looks like the better option.

I will be releasing a lite version of Affiliateblogbuilder that offers cj datafeeds based upon your criteria. Merchant, keywords, pricerange, brands etcetc That way you get access to the datafeeds for a few dollars instead of the $200.

I guess I am not allowed to post the release here as it will be promoting my product but pm if you want more info and to stay in touch.

I'd be inclined to pay a one-time fee of $20 to offset the cost of the datafeed processing... and if that were the one-time fee, I imagine there would be a lot more affiliates able to justify the expense.

I will be releasing a lite version of Affiliateblogbuilder that offers cj datafeeds based upon your criteria. Merchant, keywords, pricerange, brands etcetc That way you get access to the datafeeds for a few dollars instead of the $200.

I guess I am not allowed to post the release here as it will be promoting my product but pm if you want more info and to stay in touch.

Edwin

You aren't able to send or receive PM's yet. I am checking on advertising for another service, there is a way for you to purchase advertising, just need to check in what area on the board you would do that.